Meet our writers

Christian Meléndez is a technologist that started as a software developer and has more recently become a cloud architect focused on implementing continuous delivery pipelines with applications in several flavors, including .NET, Node.js, and Java, often using Docker containers.

Jeff Hoover has experience as a developer, consultant, software craftsmanship coach, and conference presenter. His coaching focuses on the intersection between delivering business value, applying software craftsmanship practices, and the interpersonal skills needed to be a developer in high demand.

Carlos Schults is a .NET software developer with experience in both desktop and web development, and he’s now trying his hand at mobile. He has a passion for writing clean and concise code, and he’s interested in practices that help you improve app health, such as code review, automated testing, and continuous build.

Peter Morlion is a passionate programmer that helps people and companies improve the quality of their code, especially in legacy codebases. He firmly believes that industry best practices are invaluable when working towards this goal, and his specialties include TDD, DI, and SOLID principles.

Eric Goebelbecker has worked in the financial markets in New York City for 25 years, developing infrastructure for market data and financial information exchange (FIX) protocol networks. He loves to talk about what makes teams effective (or not so effective!)

Casey Dunham, who recently launched his own security business, is known for his unique approaches to all areas of application security, stemming from his 10+ year career as a professional software developer. His strengths include secure SDLC development consulting; threat modeling; developer training; and auditing web, mobile, and desktop applications for security flaws.

KimSia writes under the nom de plume T.J. Simmons. He started his own developer firm five years ago, building solutions for professionals in telecoms and the finance industry who were overwhelmed by too many Excel spreadsheets. He’s now proficient with the automation of document generation and data extraction from varied sources.

Rick Beley has written software for over 20 years, mostly for large enterprise corporations. Most recently, he’s spent time as a development lead on two large internal web applications that aggregate data via various sources. A total geek for data and diagrams, he loves to measure, improve, and automate just about anything he can!

Melissa McEwen specializes in wearing many hats, with work ranging from content editor to project manager to full-stack developer. Her passions are code quality, work-life balance, and Javascript. She aims to write in a way that speaks to what developers care about.

Mark Henke has spent over 10 years architecting systems that talk to other systems, doing DevOps before it was cool, and matching software to its business function. Every developer is a leader of something on their team, and he wants to help them see that.

Vasiliy Zukanov worked in the semiconductor industry and then became a software engineer specializing in Android. After several years of 9-5 jobs, he decided to go into Android dev freelancing. Currently, he consults and creates Android video courses for developers.

Phil Vuollet uses software to automate process to improve efficiency and repeatability. He writes about topics relevant to technology and business, occasionally gives talks on the same topics, and is a family man who enjoys playing soccer and board games with his children.

Rodney Smith has deep experience building and deploying software, with a focus on automation and repeatability. He’s capable across all layers, from UI to middle tier to database, and from source control to build server on through the deployment pipeline.

Carlos “Kami” Maldonado is an engineer helping his company transition to DevOps. He specializes in Linux automation, and he’s experienced in all layers of infrastructure, from the application layer down to the cable. He’s part of a team migrating a monolithic app from static VMs to on-premises Kubernetes deployments.

Sylvia Fronczak is a software developer that has worked in various industries with various software methodologies. She’s currently focused on design practices that the whole team can own, understand, and evolve over time.

Rich Dammkoehler has been practicing software development for over 20 years. In the past decade, he has been a Swiss Army Knife of all things agile and a master of agile fu. Always willing to try new things, he’s worked in the manufacturing, telecommunications, insurance and banking industries. In his spare time, Rich enjoys spending time with his family in central Illinois and long-distance motorcycle riding.

Lou Bichard is a JavaScript full stack engineer with a passion for culture, approach, and delivery. He believes the best products emerge from high performing teams and practices. Lou is a fan and advocate of old-school lean and systems thinking, XP, continuous delivery, and DevOps.

Dave Farinelli is a senior software engineer with over eight years of experience. His specialty is in providing enterprise-level solutions for healthcare and insurance clients. Dave holds a B.S. in computer engineering from Kettering University in Flint, Michigan.

JT Wheeler got his start working as an engineer in the manufacturing industry. From there, he moved on to become a developer at a software consulting firm. He’s written software that spans a number of industries ranging from industrial automation to inventory control to financial systems, and he’s passionate about learning and teaching new technologies and software practices.

Alice Njenga’s areas of expertise include technology, artificial intelligence, IoT, cloud computing, security, and telecommunication. She especially enjoys converting dense technical material to articles that are easy for the layman to understand.

Christian

Christian Peters a web developer who has worked primarily in the financial service industry. He’s passionate about learning and sharing knowledge, and he’s always looking for ways to experiment with new things, even if they’re not tech related. In the past few years, he’s found that growth in non-tech specific activities has improved his ability to provide solutions more than just writing code would.

Jean Tunis is the principal consultant and founder of RootPerformance, a performance engineering consultancy that helps technology operators minimize cost and lost productivity. He has worked in this space since 1999 with various companies, helping clients solve and plan for application and network performance issues.

Vlad Georgescu is senior system architect and full-stack enterprise software developer with almost two decades of experience in the development lifecycle. He also has experience as a SCRUM master, agile coach, and team leader. On the communications front, Vlad is also effective: he’s created online communities and worked on social media marketing strategies.

Eric

Eric Olsson was first introduced to programming in high school, and he’s been fascinated by it ever since. Most of his professional experience has been working with C# and other .NET technologies. After being introduced to agile methodologies and practices such as test-driven development, he’s had a particular interest in applying them to the code he writes.

Alex is a software engineer at Serverless, Inc. where he works on building tooling for the next generation of developers. He loves AWS, Python, and databases. He lives in Omaha, NE, with his wife and four children.

Gaege Root is a “middle-end” developer who’s focused on user experience design and seamless integration with complex distributed data sources. His interests include data visualization, and he truly enjoys the client interaction facet of running a web development company.

Jonny Nabors is a software engineer at FordLabs, a software incubation group within Ford Motor Company. His mission there is to develop innovative software through human centered design, lean validation, and XP development.

Eric Boersma is a software developer and development manager who’s done everything from IT security in pharmaceuticals to writing intelligence software for the US government to building international development teams for non-profits. He loves to talk about the things he’s learned along the way, and he enjoys listening to and learning from others as well.

Delila Lee is a software developer in the NLP and ML space with degrees in both linguistics and computer science. She currently works with functional programming languages, and she does some web development on occasion.

Chris Tobolski is a full stack software engineer at FordLabs who enthusiastically practices lean validation while building human-centered products. He loves motivating teams and individuals to strive to reach their potential through continuous improvement. And while he’s a full stack engineer, he currently enjoys working with Typescript and React.

Peter Grainger is a senior engineer at Sage with over 10 years of experience in diverse industries such as satellite communications, public sector, and finance. He’s content to automate himself out of most jobs and is happiest deleting code rather than writing more. Peter has deep knowledge of Java, JavaScript, Node, MongoDB, and GitLab.

Kevin Cunningham is a full-stack developer working with PHP and Python on the backend and Vanilla JS and Vue on the front end. He loves taking ideas and making something tangible from them that adds value to businesses and lives. He spent 12 years teaching high school mathematics and still loves doing puzzles when he’s not hanging out with his wife and sons on the beach in Brighton, England.

Meet our staff

Angela Cordaro is the director of finance and operations, and she keeps Hit Subscribe humming along smoothly. When she’s not churning out spreadsheets and to-do lists, Angela is a brewster who loves to create and sample all types of beer and cider.

Erin Baez is Hit Subscribe’s director of customer success. If you’re our client, you can look forward to working closely with Erin as she checks on how your posts are performing, discusses your goals with you, and makes sure all your requests are going to the right places. She also manages Hit Subscribe’s social media. In her free time, you can find Erin playing board games, running, or reading.

Tracy Koenn is a recent graduate of Lake Forest College, and she edits clients’ blogs, ensuring that posts are grammatically sound and convey content effectively. She also works with the Hit Subscribe founders on growth-centered projects.

Kristin Rawlings is a developmental (and occasional copy) editor. After realizing in college that she probably needs a more practical career than “aspiring best-selling author,” she found her passion for editing. Now, she spends her days helping bridge the gap between writers and their readers (and extolling the Oxford comma).

Alison Cantrell is an editor who loves to collaborate with writers to craft their stories—whether they’re in the form of a book or blog post. She has a master’s degree in book publishing from Portland State University and likes to spend her time reading and exploring the Pacific Northwest.

Meet our founders

Erik

Erik Dietrich is a veteran of the software world and has occupied just about every position in it: developer, architect, manager, CIO, and, eventually, independent management and strategy consultant. This breadth of experience has allowed him to speak to all industry personas and to write several books and countless blog posts on dozens of sites.

Amanda

Amanda Muledy has spent her professional life as an editor working primarily with tech companies. Her degree is in literature, and her specialty is helping authors tell a story—even a 1,200 word one—in an engaging way. Nowadays, she spends her days managing the internal affairs at Hit Subscribe, helping its writers grow, and registering bird sightings in the Audubon app.